Titanic & Towering: Celato Bureau by De Castelli

December 15, 2011

Italian indoor and outdoor furniture and accessories company De Castelli specializes in one material: iron. Their outdoor planters have been designed in collaboration with international landscape architects. But the company also places the material inside, creating special products and projects ranging from freeform tables to custom staircases. Besides iron, De Castelli manufactures products in wood and stone, offering a collection of objects whose materials have powerful associations.

Celato. Manufactured by De Castelli.

Monolithic Bureau in Copper, Iron, or Brass

One impressive piece by the company is Celato, which means “concealed, hidden and secret.” This towering bureau calls to mind “different personalities: a menhir, a safe, a skyscraper.” Made of a wooden frame with copper, acid-etched iron, or acid-etched brass cladding, Celato shines in metallic splendor, like a giant bar of gold or a grandiose copper coin. Besides its alluring scintillation, Celato’s drawers also prove captivating. Drawers are of different heights and are scattered left and right, creating a stepping stone effect. The fact that the drawers are all different makes each drawer seem magical, as if it holds something mysterious—caches of pirate treasure or piles of loose gems.

De Castelli’s aesthetic is one of defamiliarization—of taking a known object and making it foreign by altering some elemental facet. The company explains that its design “recalls objects with familiar shapes that, thanks to the change in scale and the use of these unusual materials, acquire new meaning, generating an unexpected visual and emotional impact and becoming a material and spatial presence inside the space they are placed in.” Celato’s great size and gleaming material transform the concept of a bureau from something quotidian to something quixotic.

About the Manufacturer: Italian company De Castellibegan in 2003 with a collection of indoor and outdoor furniture and accessories made of iron. Started by Albino Celato, who comes from a family of blacksmiths, De Castelli soon broadened its materials to include wood and stone, “the three valuable natural materials that since the very origins have been offered to man’s ingenuity for the creation of useful tools and artifacts.” From planters to doghouses, vases to chairs, De Castelli works with designers and landscape architects to create “objects that are more and more unique.”